hearts knit together
by sugartina
Summary: Quinn and Rachel's hearts were knit together with glass. It was inevitable they would shatter. Putting glass back together is impossible without cutting your hands. Oneshot.


One shot from a couple of weeks back. Gratuitous angst, lots of nudity, all that fun stuff. I don't own glee, otherwise we'd have probably seen a few bums.

Quinn was pain and brittle glass and sand through fingers.

The picture of Rachel, smiling the starlight she saved for Quinn, lay on the floor, frame shattered. On the too bright screen of Quinn's laptop, Rachel was captured in a moment of giving that exact same smile to Jesse.

The street outside was quiet.

The world had never been louder.

Quinn's face was crisscrossed with dry tear trails, and she remembered the last time she had cried this much.

When they had laid out on a blanket under an endless sheet of stars, the galaxy visible, no artificial lights for miles. Where Rachel had taken Quinn's hand and moved closer in the way she always did, familiar and natural. She never had to say 'I love you,' but did anyway, because she always felt a rush doing it.

Rachel had fallen asleep first, and Quinn had held her close, and cried with happiness, never knowing how she had gotten such a lovely life.

The magazine article had been an axe to Quinn's heart. She read everything with Rachel in, ever since she started appearing in the press. It was a long running joke for them, from years back.

Seeing the reporter ask about whether Rachel and her new co-star had romance behind the scenes, as well as on stage. Eyes refusing to accept the refusal to confirm or deny.

The calls with Rachel's PR team. Being told the public would love the story of the Broadway stars that dated. That they never had to confirm anything.

Quinn kicked a wall, a pained cry of anguish breaking out of her lips as fire.

Whenever she blinked, the image of Rachel telling her that it was their chemistry, their love, that she tapped into when acting.

Seeing them get closer again. Feeling like she was a burden. Cutting the chain so they wouldn't be held back.

Her phone buzzed through the cracked speaker, and Quinn ignored it until it did the same twice more. She scowled futilely as she picked it up, and swiped her forefinger to answer the call.

'She's heartbroken,' came the small voice of Blaine.

'She can join the club.'

'What she did was wrong, but Quinn… You know she does love you. It hardly makes up for her actions, but she's going to quit the show, for you. She's going to tell everyone, lose her team, to show you.'

'I don't want grand gestures. I want.'

Silence for a moment, but for the pounding of cars on streets and mind on heart.

'I want to tell her how beautiful she is and not think about how everyone will think we're friends. I want to stop feeling like I'm back in _fucking_ high school, alone and insecure and lost and lashing out at _everyone._ '

Breathing was getting sharper, and Quinn felt the salt of tears build up at the top of her throat, but her anger carried her through. 'I want a girlfriend, a love, who maybe _tells_ me before she does an interview about her supposed _perfect_ chemistry with Jesse St. James.'

Quinn could hear the resigned look on Blaine's face. The understanding that must have just filled his heart.

'I care about you Quinn. We all do. And I would never, ever, presume to tell you what to do, you know that,' she did, 'I just wanted to tell you she cares. And she'll be here if, you ever want to talk.'

A nod, and then 'Goodbye, Blaine. Thank you.'

The stench of beer permeated the bar, and Quinn's heels were slightly sticky against the carpet.

She didn't care. Her hand rested on the shoulder of a woman two years younger, her fingers playing at the sleeve of her shirt. She listened as she complained about her college course, about the lack of queer girls, about how horrible the world could be.

Quinn met her eyes with understanding and comfort, and took her hand home with her.

The rode each other's fingers to climax, lips fused together and chests covered in bite marks, falling asleep with their arms draped across each other.

When Quinn woke up to find the woman (Zara, she had found out), standing in the kitchen nude next to a boiling, kettle, Quinn was confused and delighted, with a heart sewn from guilt.

'I never expected you to stay. I didn't realise you wanted that.' She murmured, but wrapped an arm around Zara's waist anyway.

'I didn't at first,' she said, leaning into Quinn's touch and dropping tea bags into chipped mugs. 'But you did.'

It's never a moment of decision. Rather a slow process, in which Quinn finds more of Zara's films left by the blu-ray player, no rush to return them, a few of her dresses and jeans in the wardrobe.

She grows used to having a Zara in the kitchen, helping with breakfast. To leaving for work and coming back to find Zara typing away on her laptop, or sitting at the balcony with a notepad, her thoughts to words to eventual printed paper in shops, enough anthologies occasionally picked up as a whim to pay for her small life.

Quinn often comes home from work to find Zara has already boiled a cup of tea, always bringing in new bags, and hands it to Quinn, pulling her into a hug which clashes Quinn's clothes against bare skin.

It's almost wonderful, until Zara stumbles across a box marked _For Rachel, upon your return._

'I didn't open it. Didn't have to.' She says, dressed this time, ready to go on an official date with Quinn. 'How long since you made this?'

'A month.'

'And we've been… Whatever this is, for three.' Zara sighed, tracing an intricately sketched star on the side of the lid. 'We've all got baggage. I just thought by this point you'd have told me about yours.'

Their date becomes spilling their secrets to each other and falling asleep in their dresses, promising that this will make things better, deeper.

It almost did, and for a few weeks there's comfort in it.

Comfort that's shattered into a million grains of darkness when Rachel knocks on Quinn's door. When she tells Quinn she can't keep telling herself that it was goodbye, and that no, they're worth more than that.

Quinn felt ready to say no, to refuse. But she made her classic mistake. She looked into Rachel's eyes, brown melting into her own hazel. Their hands met, clutching at the life they had almost forgotten, and they were out the door, running through the streets to the train station, finding their way to an empty space in the world.

Quinn returned a week later, slightly tanned, Rachel holding her hand and her heart.

Saying goodbye to Zara had been so easy when she'd thought about it in the week. Zara was strong, kind, and far better at this than Quinn would ever be. Zara would be able to take it.

What made Quinn pause more than anything was the utter lack of surprise. Zara had been sad, regretful, left in a hurry, but not once did Quinn's words appear to shock her.

The thin callouses on Quinn's fingertips were nothing compared to the callousness she felt.

But she had Rachel's love, and it was rarely as powerful as when they kissed on the pavement, washed in the thick, greasy orange of the streetlights.

'We're not going to be perfect,' she reminds Rachel, as they drive down a long, lonesome road.

'Of course not. I'd never want that.'

'I don't mean _quirky_ not perfect, I mean deep anxieties and repairing our broken trust not perfect.'

'If I didn't believe myself capable of doing better by you, I never would have returned to try again.'

That's how it is, never full conversations, never confronting things head on.

That would run the risk of everything falling apart, and Quinn can't have that happen. Not again. Not ever.

The east coast to west coast trip is long, and they take turns to drive, stopping at museums and theatres and hotels. By the time they check in on Sauvie island, the first orange leaves have fallen, but the days still lasted forever, the rays of sun still washing over the sands. They spend a day on the beach, bare and falling in love again, careful not to touch out of fear that the other would shatter.

When they lie on the covers together, hands splayed out next to each other, they say the first 'I love you' in half a year. And they kiss, and then more, finding themselves covered in heat and each other and the coolness of the duvet.

The memories of pain don't slip away, try as Quinn does. But slowly, ever so slowly, they are displaced by new ones of happiness. Of Rachel, singing to her as she gets dressed in the morning. Of Rachel, writing songs at 3am because she can't control when inspiration chooses to strike her.

Of Rachel, saying she loves Quinn to the reporter, and keeping her head high through the controversy and the drama and the eventual wonderful acceptance.

It's not the perfect relationship, and never will be.

Quinn hopes so, at least.


End file.
